TEEN TITANS SEASON FOUR (2005)

                   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*                                                                                                                         This season proves noteworthy for the very involved Trigon plotline. 

                                                                                                                     POOR                                                                                EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH-- Beast Boy wants to buy a moped but has no money, so he goes to work at a burger restaurant. Though as a vegetarian he's grossed out to sell meat products, he's shocked to learn that aliens control the restaurant, and they want to kill all humans with alien tofu-burgers so they can take their cows (?) Easily the most unfunny episode.                           

  FAIR                                                                                                                                                                                                         DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL -- Control Freak finally gets a full episode, and just as Mad Mod thrust the Titans into a world of British culture, the Freak hurls the heroes into the chaos that is American TV. Some cute bits, but the most interesting development is that Beast Boy saves the day with his superior nerd-itude.                                                                                                 THE QUEST-- Robin gets his butt kicked by an evil kung-fu fighter, Katarou (whose costume slightly resembles that of the DC hero Deadman). The Teen Wonder becomes convinced that he needs a higher level of martial arts training, so he leaves his teammates behind and journeys to Asia, seeking the counsel of the legendary "True Master." To reach this teacher, Robin must fight his way past three guardians, all of whom are humanized animals (and are never explained). Katarou also seeks the tutelage of the True Master, but this instructor is not what either of them expects to find.                                                                                      CYBORG THE BARBARIAN-- This Cyborg-centered story propels him five thousand years into the past. While his comrades seek to bring him back, Cyborg takes shelter with a barbarian tribe, led by the warrior-woman Sarasim. He takes the tribe's part against monstrous invaders, but if he can't find a way to recharge his batteries in this non-technological world, his systems will crash and he'll perish.                                                                              TROQ-- This anti-racism episode comes close to being a lecture but avoids pure didacticism by stressing the camaraderie of the central five characters. The Titans render aid to Val-Yor, an alien hero seeking to neutralize a swarm of mechanical invaders, at least partly to protect Earth from possible danger. But Val-Yor holds Tamaranians in contempt-- for reasons never articulated-- and he refers to her by the insulting name "troq." The episode gains points in that when Cyborg finds out what the epithet means, he doesn't reference his own personal experiences with racism.                                 OVERDRIVE-- Cyborg downloads a new high-performance chip into his system, and his buddies soon see him going into "overdrive," constantly seeking new challenges. At the same time, new villain Billy Numerous makes the Titans' lives miserable with his ability to conjure up countless self-duplicates. Cyborg must not only find a way to counteract the evildoer's powers but neutralize the aspects of the chip that have made the hero so hyper.                                MOTHER MAY-EYE-- The strange woman of the title places the Titans under her maternal control by constantly feeding them brainwashing pies. This circumstance makes for a lot of comic setups where the heroes are subjected to being treated like small children, but the Mother's motives for playing mommy remain obscure, and she never gets an origin as such.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

GOOD                                                                                                                                                                                                              STRANDED-- Though Starfire and Robin never become lovers as they did in the comics, this episode delivers some level of closure to their romantic arc. While the heroes are exploring a wrecked space station, they find a giant monster aboard and are forced to flee in their spaceship, and they all end up getting "stranded" on an alien world rife with hostile forms of life. But the real challenge for Robin is that when Cyborg teases him about his relationship with Starfire, he rashly denies any such connection-- which naturally alienates Starfire, since he's sent her various mixed signals. The two of them have to hash out their emotional bonds while coping with the giant monster, which continues to pursue them for no obvious reason. To dispel some of the heavy atmosphere of the main plot, Beast Boy and Cyborg get into assorted wacky antics as the green guy must play repairman to their ship and to Cyborg's scattered components, and Raven gets her first solo subplot devoted to humor, as she finds herself pestered by some odd little ETs.                                                                                                                                                                                           BIRTHMARK/ THE PROPHECY/ THE END 1-3-- These partly non-consecutive episodes devote themselves to a plotline only hinted at in the first season: that Raven is the daughter of the supremely powerful demon Trigon, and that he has plans for her on her impending birthday. The Trigon of the comics wasn't much better than Deathstroke, but here he gains greater mojo partly because the writers wisely chose to build up to his advent slowly, allowing for much more attention to the way Raven compensated for her being the spawn of Supreme Evil. Trigon raises Slade from the dead and imbues him with magical powers, and Raven soon recognizes Trigon's plan to use her as a dimensional doorway to invade the Earth-realm. She seeks for a time to defer revealing the truth to her friends, though anyone who's not read the comics may not completely follow the fine points of Raven's origin here. In any case, Slade continues to do Trigon's bidding until the demon-lord has what he wants, at which point Trigon reneges on the deal. (Thus Slade gets a taste of what he put Terra through during her apprenticeship.) Slade then lends aid to the Titans to spite Trigon, though it's clear that Slade does so only out of spite. Three of the Titans are forced to battle doppelgangers of themselves while Robin seeks out Raven, who as a result of being used as a doorway has de-aged to childhood. The world is saved, and the demon-spawned heroine passes her baptism of (literal) fire, though by the next and final season she'll return to being familiar, eternally grumpy Raven.